Russia’s Ministry of Justice is arguing a U.S. federal court should throw out the Democratic National Committee's lawsuit against the Russian government, the Trump campaign, and WikiLeaks for alleged conspiracy to steal the 2016 election on the grounds that the "United States’ Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act protects the Russian government from such lawsuits."
In particular, the lawsuit’s naming of the GRU military spy agency as a defendant takes the litigation out of bounds on the basis that “any alleged ‘military attack’ is a quintessential sovereign act,” said a Nov. 6 statement by the ministry’s Department for International Law and Cooperation.
The Russian government also warned that if the suit is allowed to proceed, it exposes American spy services such as the National Security Agency — an arm of the Defense Department — to “a tidal wave of civil litigation” in foreign courts.
The statement cited a former senior Justice Department official, Jack Goldsmith, who said “the U.S. intelligence services break into computers and computer networks abroad at an astounding rate, certainly on a greater scale than any other intelligence service in the world.”
Moreover, the Russians argued that the allegations raised by the DNC were a “political question” best handled on a “state-to-state” basis by the Trump administration and the U.S. Congress.
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If the DNC case is allowed to proceed, the Democrats will seek internal documents and testimony from the Trump campaign that might illuminate interactions with Russia. They are asking for damages that they expect amount to several million dollars to compensate for alleged harm to the DNC’s campaign operations, employees and fundraising activities.
“Donald Trump has an easy choice to make: defend our democracy or do Putin’s bidding,” DNC Chairman Tom Perez said in a statement, referring to Russian president Vladimir Putin. “The Trump Administration should stand up for the American people by telling Putin that the American judiciary has the jurisdiction and power to hold foreign governments that attack our people accountable for the harm they cause.”
In a September communication to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs asked the U.S. government to “take immediate action to stop” the lawsuit, nudging the State Department to weigh in on Russia’s behalf.
The State Department said it needed time to review the matter before it could comment.
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The DNC ... has argued that it can sue the Russian government because, the committee alleged, its agents stole “trade secrets, a form of commercial activity” and the hack was a “tortious act” committed in the United States.
Moscow argued that the commercial-activity exception does not apply to “an alleged military attack by a ‘military intelligence agency,’ ” and that a tort case cannot be recast as a commercial-activity case.
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The Russians have not entered a formal motion to dismiss, and a Justice Ministry official, Mikhail V. Vinogradov, made clear in the letter that the document “does not [constitute] an appearance in the litigation.”
Russia wants DNC’s election-hacking lawsuit thrown out (WaPo)